No, Holy Father, Health is Not a “Right”

This week Pope Leo addressed the Pontifical Academy for Life, the now-controversial Vatican organization founded by Pope John Paul II with the purpose to advise the Holy See on subjects related to human life, medicine, and healthcare. In Leo’s address, he quoted his predecessor Pope Francis in arguing that health is “not a consumer good, but a universal right.” 

I respectfully disagree. In fact, the idea that health is a “right” leads to a whole host of problems, as well as less healthy people. It’s also not a truly Catholic way of looking at our rights and obligations as members of the human family.

In modern times, claims of rights have proliferated more than the offspring of the most fertile rabbit. Whereas in ancient and even medieval times, few people were claiming rights, now it seems that every day a new purported right is invented. Strictly speaking, “rights,” at least as they are commonly understood in modern political philosophy, are not even a category in historic Catholic moral thinking. Rights today focus almost exclusively on what privileges someone has, whereas in Catholic thought, the primary focus is on our obligations to God and to others. That being said, the concept of rights does find a foundation in Catholic philosophy in that rights can be considered entitlements that individuals or entities hold which impose corresponding duties or obligations on others. Thus, if someone has a right, then others have a corresponding duty. 

If someone, for example, has a right to liberty, then that person cannot be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned. The authorities (and everyone else for that matter) therefore have an obligation not to detain someone without cause. Yet note that this right is not absolute; if a person commits a crime, it is not a violation of his rights to then detain him. In fact, the authorities are obligated to imprison him for the sake of the common good. Even something as fundamental as the right to life can be set aside, if for example a person violently attacks someone and is killed in self-defense. Rights presume obligations on the holder of those rights as well as on everyone else.

And if the most fundamental rights of life and liberty are not absolute and include ambiguities, this is even more true of other modern rights. Consider the right to free speech. Everyone knows the classic argument that one doesn’t have a right to yell “fire!” in a crowded theater if no fire exists, but that’s not the only “exception” to this right. Does the right to free speech mean that I can interrupt a talk being given at a university? Does it mean a priest can preach heresy from the pulpit without punishment from his bishop? What exactly is “free speech,” then? Definitions vary depending on who you ask. Clearly, modern rights have serious limitations and ambiguities. 

These issues become exponentially more difficult to navigate when we turn to the idea of a right to “health.” First, what exactly is meant by “health?” How healthy does one have to be to be considered a rightful possessor of health? At my age, I simply want to be free from major problems and only have light aches and pains each day. But what I consider healthy would likely be considered unacceptable to my weight-lifting 22-year-old son. Do I have a right to be as healthy as him? Who decides what is the acceptable level of health? When I don’t have it, who is depriving me of it?

What are the obligations on others that correspond to my supposed right to health? Can I demand services from the local hospital to improve my memory or completely fix my achy back? If they refuse to do this, have they violated my rights? Can I sue them?

We can take this to even more absurd levels. It’s well known now that processed foods are not good for our health. Can the truck driver sue gas stations for only selling highly processed foods that harm his health? Doesn’t offering the Kit Kat bar and the 24oz Coca Cola violate his right to health? 

And what about health problems that are genetic and incurable? If a child is born with Tay-Sachs Disease, or a middle-aged man is diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease, does this mean their right to health was violated? And if so, by whom? God? And since there is no cure for either of these afflictions, what are the obligations on the part of health-care officials toward them? Pain management? Experimental treatments? Who pays for this?

Speaking of healthcare payments, maintaining one’s health is not free; it costs money—sometimes significant amounts of it. So does a right to health mean that everyone has a right to free healthcare? Who then determines what level of healthcare is to be offered? And, then, who pays the doctors and other healthcare professionals for these “free” services? Does the right to health mean that I am obligated to pay taxes to fund someone’s cancer treatments? What about their elective plastic surgery?

Determining who pays and what level of service is provided brings us to another major problem when it comes to a discussion of rights: government involvement. Whenever the issue of rights are raised, it means that someone is attempting to place obligations on the State to secure and protect those rights. In his address, Pope Leo calls for “the integration of health considerations into all policies (transportation, housing, agriculture, employment, education, and so on), since questions of health touch upon every aspect of life.” In other words, governments need to implement a complex (and likely intrusive) set of regulations and laws in order that we might all have a right to health, a right whose definition is ambiguous and debatable. 

We know what happens when governments get directly involved in healthcare. Our American health insurance system, which rests on a multitude of government mandates and rules, is a mess; no sane person would argue that it fosters a healthier populace. Many government regulations restrict the ability of healthcare providers to offer potentially superior alternative healthcare options to their patients. Just consider as one example the pressure the government exerted to prevent doctors from prescribing the completely safe and potentially helpful drug ivermectin during the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments have a tendency to violate the very rights they claim to protect, when it suits powerful interests.

Further, government protection of rights means that government officials also call the shots. If, for example, a high-ranking government official decides that it’s in the best interest of our health to offer free IVF treatments to infertile couples, then access to that immoral practice soon becomes a “right” as well—one that trumps the right to life of the countless unborn babies killed in that procedure.

Another problem with requiring government involvement—as always happens when claiming “rights”—is that it diminishes our feeling of responsibility for caring for the sick and dying. After all, why should I bother when I know government programs exist to help them? And, if I do try to help the sick in any meaningful way, it’s likely that government regulations will prevent me from offering many forms of care, all in the name of protecting the sick’s “rights.”

Declaring health as a right, then, violates other, more defensible, rights, and often ends up with a less healthy populace.

Does this mean that Catholics shouldn’t care about our health or the health of others? Certainly not. Catholics, in fact, are obliged by Our Lord to care for the sick. Note, however, that the primary obligation rests on the healthy to care for others in charity; it is not based on invented modern “rights.” Instead, it’s founded on Our Lord’s teaching that when we care for the sick, we are actually caring for Him. In fact, He makes it clear that our salvation is dependent upon caring for the sick, among other things (cf. Matthew 25:31-40). So no Catholic can exempt himself from this obligation. 

In the early Church, this charitable drive to help the sick was considered extremely radical. When plague hit a town in the Roman Empire, every able-bodied inhabitant fled to the countryside to avoid infection. Christians, however, would not only stay in town to care for the sick, but even Christians from other towns would enter into the city to help. When the poor souls asked why they did this, the Christians simply responded, “Because you are Jesus to me.” This witness spread and was a major factor in the growth of Christianity: this religion was truly something new under the sun.  

The Catholic Church, in fact, founded the modern hospital system. Dating back to the earliest days of legal Christianity, Catholics have been at the forefront of establishing houses and institutions to care for the sick and dying. The apostate Roman Emperor Julian even complained of the Christians’ care for the sick, as it essentially made the pagans look bad.

Yet none of that history of care for the sick was wrapped up in the language of “rights.” Catholics instead based their charitable works on a foundation of their obligations toward others. 

In other words, when Catholics, including the pope, talk about health as a “right,” they have it backwards. Yes, we have an obligation to care for the sick and dying, but asserting an ambiguous right to health only confuses the issue. If Catholic leaders truly want to care for the suffering, they need to stop trying to invent new rights, which will do more harm than good, but instead urge Catholics to greater works of charity.